Crew Ready To Honor Urso Tonight

Saturday

Aug 9, 2014 at 12:01 AMAug 9, 2014 at 1:38 PM

Ethan Finlay will add a little bit extra to his pregame routine tonight.

Sometime before the Crew hosts Toronto FC, the Crew midfielder will take a short walk from the locker room in the northwest corner of Crew Stadium to the south concourse. There, near the statue honoring the Crew's founder, the late Lamar Hunt, Finlay will spend a moment with the plaque remembering his friend and former teammate and roommate Kirk Urso.

Ethan Finlay will add a little bit extra to his pregame routine tonight.

Sometime before the Crew hosts Toronto FC, the Crew midfielder will take a short walk from the locker room in the northwest corner of Crew Stadium to the south concourse. There, near the statue honoring the Crew's founder, the late Lamar Hunt, Finlay will spend a moment with the plaque remembering his friend and former teammate and roommate Kirk Urso.

"I'll definitely go visit his memorial and see that on game day," Finlay said. "You want to remember the good things and there were so many good things. I don't think it's going to be tough (to focus). I hope that if anything we can rally around him and get this team up and show some real heart this weekend."

Wednesday marked two years since the 22-year-old Urso suddenly passed away due to arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy - a rare, genetic condition that commonly causes sudden death in athletes and young people.

Since then, his locker has been replaced inside the Crew's training facility in Obetz with a memorial hanging on one of the walls. On the current roster, only 10 players remain who were Urso's teammates during the 2012 season.

"I think it's important that we carry on the Kirk Urso legacy and that we keep the Ursos and the memories of Kirk with the Crew family," said defender Eric Gehrig, who was the 2013 recipient of the Kirk Urso Heart Award at the Crew's season-end awards ceremony. "They will forever be a part of the Crew organization and I think it's going to be a good showcase and remembrance for him. I know for the guys that knew him it'll be some extra motivation and incentive to not only go out there and get the three points and continue our little run here but also to honor someone who meant a lot to us and to the organization."

The Crew Soccer Foundation was originally going to honor Urso with a memorial game against his alma mater, North Carolina, on Monday. On July 17, that game was dropped and this game was designated as the primary fundraiser for the Kirk Urso Memorial Fund, which raises money to help support and develop youth heart health research and programming.

"We want to raise money for the foundation and we want to honor Kirk Urso," Crew coach Gregg Berhalter said. "He was a part of our organization and we're never going to forget him. Both things are important: supporting the foundation and honoring him."

"I think it's fantastic," Finlay said Monday. "Obviously it's coming up on two years here and it's still in your mind and I think it comes to forefront more during this week when you start remembering him, but we're always trying to whether it's around the stadium or in the locker room. He's around and he's in our thoughts. Personally it's tough, especially when you see yourself have success and you saw someone who could've had just as much success if not more and his life was cut short at such a young age. It makes you appreciate every moment and the moments I'm going through in having a good scoring streak and our team winning games."

Fans tonight can purchase copies of "Kirk Urso: Forever Massive Memories From The 2012 Columbus Crew," a book of stories about Urso as compiled by Crew historian Steve Sirk.

Berhalter was in Sweden when Urso passed away. At the time, he was coaching Billy Schuler, who had been Urso's teammate at UNC.

"As soon as we found out I immediately said to him, 'Get on the next flight. Get back to North Carolina,' " Berhalter said.

Like Berhalter, Crew captain Michael Parkhurst was overseas when Urso passed away. While playing for Danish side F.C. Nordsjælland, Parkhurst said he felt an emotional impact even though he hadn't met Urso.

"Of course it doesn't hit as hard as if he was a teammate," he said, "But in the soccer community, when something tragic like that happens I think we all feel it. It's a small community, the soccer world. We're all co-workers even if we're not teammates. It touches everybody whether you played with him or not."

"To me it's quite remarkable how a player who's here only for a short time had such a profound effect on guys," said Berhalter, who never met Urso either. "That's what's interesting, but also in his college career he was a leader and he was someone that led by example and pushed people and really was a good guy on the field."

Now tonight, the hope is to honor his legacy with a strong performance against a Toronto team that has won both prior meetings this season.

"I think everyone's always out there giving everything that they have," Gehrig said. "But with the occasion and the magnitude of the game itself and then you throw in that we're honoring one of our best friends that we had on the team and a guy that did exactly what you would want everyone in an organization to do – busting his butt and coming to work every day with a positive attitude, that's stuff you want every pro to emulate. I think that will soak in the game a little bit and push us on.

"It was already a big game and it's a bigger game now, probably the biggest game of the season for more than one reason."